


the frost took up the eyes

by ohmygodwhy



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: 3 months late lol, Body Horror, Growing Up Together, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, IwaOi Horror Week, M/M, implied csa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 03:04:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17133833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: “Tooru,” He says again, close enough now that he can see Tooru’s shoulders shaking, see his elbows mover as he rubs at his face. Is he crying? “Hey, Tooru, what’s wrong?” He grabs at his shoulder, and Tooru jumps at the touch.He looks up, and Hajime flinches back in shock. There’s blood. All over Tooru’s face, smeared on his cheeks and dripping down his chin, staining his shirt.





	the frost took up the eyes

**Author's Note:**

> just found out abt iwaoi horror week why did nobody tell me tht it existed :/ this is inspired by a fic I read a while ago & a vague mixture of a bunch of the prompts. warning for implied csa/abuse. one more spoiler u can check for in the end notes if u want bc i don't wanna give it away

  
  
It first happens when they’re eight.    
  
It’s late summer, just on the cusp of fall, and Hajime has spent the whole afternoon outside with his net and bag of the mason jars that Tooru got him for his birthday. It’s not quite cold yet, so the bugs are still out. Tooru didn’t come because he hates bugs and besides, his uncle is vision from Tokyo, so he’s been busy all day anyways.    
  
Tooru’s uncle is a tall, serious man. He’s a part of some big important business in Tokyo—on his way up in the world, he’s heard Tooru’s dad say. He visits a few times a year, when he has the chance, and Hajime’s only spoken to him two or three times. Something about him makes Hajime uncomfortable, but he doesn’t know what, so he avoids Tooru’s house whenever he’s over.   
  
The point is, Tooru is supposed to be spending the day with his dad and his uncle, out on the lake or playing catch or whatever it is they all do together. So when he finds him at the park, sitting alone on one of the swings, he’s surprised.    
  
“Tooru?” He calls; they’re at the age where it’s still appropriate to call each other by their first names. Tooru doesn’t respond.     
  
At first he think he’s mistaking someone else for him but no, he’d know the back of that head anywhere, tufts of unruly hair curling up.    
  
“Tooru,” He says again, close enough now that he can see Tooru’s shoulders shaking, see his elbows mover as he rubs at his face. Is he crying? “Hey, Tooru, what’s wrong?” He grabs at his shoulder, and Tooru jumps at the touch.    
  
He looks up, and Hajime flinches back in shock. There’s blood. All over Tooru’s face, smeared on his cheeks and dripping down his chin, staining his shirt.    
  
“What the—“ Hajime panics, because he doesn’t know where it’s coming from, and there’s so much, “Tooru, what happened?”   
  
Tooru doesn’t look nearly as alarmed as he should—he looks scared, and confused, but not like he’s panicking. He wipes at his face—at his eyes, and the back of his hand comes away soaked.   
  
“My eyes,” he says, blinking hard, “My eyes were hurting, they started—itching, so I rubbed, but it wouldn’t stop, and then,” he rubs at his eyes again, hard enough that Hajime grabs his bony wrists and pulls them away from his face.    
  
“Don’t itch them, stupid!” He says, too loud—he’s not mad, really, but he’s scared, and when he’s scared he gets loud.    
  
“But they  _ hurt _ ,” Tooru says, blinking rapidly; dark blood rolls down his face like tears, “It won’t stop.”   
  
Hajime gulps at the sight. It makes him nauseous, but Tooru needs his help right now. “Where’s your dad? Or your uncle?”   
  
Tooru shrugs, “They said they were gonna out and do adult stuff.”    
  
“So they just left you here?”   
  
Tooru just shrugs again, “I wanna gonna look for you, but then my eyes...”   
  
Hajime bites his lip, “Lets go find your mom,” he says.    
  
Normally, Tooru would complain about Hajime telling him what to do, but right now he just stands up, lets Hajime lead him by the wrist down the hill and the two blocks to his house.    
  
When they get inside, Tooru’s mom is in the living room watching TV. She screams when she sees her son, rushes over and cups his face in her hands like he’s dying.    
  
“My eyes were hurting,” Tooru says again when she asks what happened, and then again when she rushes them to the ER, Hajime holding his hand tight in the backseat: “My eyes were hurting.”   
  
“Are they still hurting right now?” The doctor asks, concern evident in his voice. When they wiped all the blood off his face, there were no cuts, no injuries, nowhere the blood could’ve come from other than his eyes.    
  
“No,” Tooru says, “Not really.”    
  
“Has this ever happened before?”   
  
“No.”    
  
There’s a long pause, where the doctor purses his lips in frowns, eyebrows crinkling together.   
  
He shines a light in Tooru’s eyes, tell him to look up and down and sideways, follow his finger, asks how many digits he’s holding up. He says he’ll have some of Tooru’s blood, the stuff that came from his eyes, tested, and that he’ll get back to them in a few days. Other than that, he doesn’t have any answers to the dozens of questions Tooru’s mom asks. Tooru’s eyes seem fine—no irritation, no infection, nothing that he sees that could’ve caused this. He says he’s never seen anything like this before.   
  
Hajime’s never seen Tooru’s mom look so afraid before. He feels the same way. Tooru stays remarkably calm throughout the whole thing; Hajime would’ve thought he’d be crying for sure, but he isn’t. That’s probably the scariest part.   
  
They go home, and Hajime’s mom lets him stay the night at Tooru’s, just so he can keep an eye on him. The test results come back a few days later, and, other than the fact that it did come from his eyes, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about Tooru’s blood.    
  
It’s so strange. Tooru’s mom frets for days, hovering nervously around her son, but it doesn’t happen again.    
  
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Hajime asks, watching Tooru’s eyes for some sign that something is wrong.   
  
Tooru nods, trying his best to smile like this is all normal. “Yeah,” He says, “My eyes are fine. I must’a just got dirt in them or something.”   
  
Hajime doesn’t remind him that the doctor said they weren’t irritated, and Tooru hadn’t been playing in the dirt anyways.    
  
“Okay,” He says, trying to take ur face value. “You wanna watch Godzilla with me?”   
  
Tooru looks relieved to be asked something so normal. “As long as it’s not the old one again. We’ve watched it like ten times this week.”    


 

They’re eleven, last game of their first junior high season, and they lose. To Shiratorizawa, of course, because they’re the only team that could ever stop Tooru’s sheer force of will. Hajime is sad, and disappointed, but he wasn’t really expecting to win this one. It’s only their first year of real competition; he knows they’ll get better.

It’s their coach that panics, this time. Hajime is helping pick up the volleyballs after practice, and he hears loud voices from the locker room. Tooru went to the locker room to change. He drops the ball, and runs. 

Coach is on his knees in front of Tooru, who’s bent over on the bench. Hajime doesn’t have to get close to know that Tooru’s hands will be covered in blood. Tooru looks up at the sound of his shoes, and the sight of dark red rolling down his cheeks is just as shocking as it was three years ago. Time had made the picture dull, but it’s back in full technicolor; Hajime’s stomach lurches.

“Iwaizumi,” Coach says, eyes blown wide in fear, “Go call someone - an ambulance, or - god, I don’t know. Has this ever happened before?”

For a moment, Hajime flounders, barely able to tear his eyes away from Tooru’s face, “Uh, yeah. Yeah, but the doctor said he didn’t know what…” 

That doesn’t help at all, obviously, but Coach looks relieved to know that he isn’t the only one who doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. “Stay with him,” he says, “I’ll call his mom.”

Hajime takes his place in front of Tooru, who’s back to rubbing at his eyes, smearing the blood across his forehead, his nose. Some of it catches in his hair. Just like before, Hajime takes his wrists in his hands.

“Don’t,” he says, quiet but firm. Tooru looks up at him, eyes scrunched up like they are when he’s crying; Hajime wishes that is was tears pooling in his eyes instead of more goddamn blood. 

“It hurts,” Tooru sobs, “Hajime, it hurts.”

“Here,” he says, because he doesn’t know what to say to make it better, and pulls Tooru to his feet and leads him to the bathroom. Carefully, he wets a paper towel, and wipes away the blood drying on his cheeks. On his forehead. On his nose. The blood pours as quickly as he cleans, but he just wets a new paper towel, and wipes away the dark, thick red as it comes.

Eventually, the flow slow to a stop, blood clotting at the corner of Tooru’s eyes. 

“It hurts,” Tooru says again, blinking as Hajime dabs at his face and somehow, Hajime thinks that he’s talking about more than just his eyes. 

 

Hajime doesn’t like Tooru’s uncle. He doesn’t think that Tooru’s uncle much likes him, either, so he feels justified in that. There’s just something about the way he talks, the way he carries himself, like he owns and deserves everything there is. He talks big and loud and fills up a room with his presence. Takes up so much more space than he should. He’s Tooru’s father’s older brother, and he can’t tell if Tooru likes him or not. If he’s comfortable with the way his uncle’s hand splays across the back of his neck and stays there.

They spend a day, Tooru and his dad and his uncle, out together whenever his uncle visits. Tooru never says his day is bad, but he never says it’s good, either. He’s never loved fishing, so it makes sense he wouldn’t start loving it just because his uncle is there.

When they are thirteen, Hajime gets a call in the middle of the night. He reaches for his phone blearily, half asleep and out of it. He already knows who it is before he answers the phone.

“What is it, Tooru?” he slurs.

There’s silence on the other end of the phone, save for some shaky breathing and a wet sniff. 

“Hajime,” he says, “My eyes.”

He stops, because of course Hajime knows what he means by now. He’s also very tired; his limbs are heavy and his eyes will barely open. He has an English test tomorrow.

“Just go to the bathroom,” he says, “Clean ‘em up, like before. ‘M sure they’ll be fine.”

There’s never been any lasting effects, anyways. Just gotta wait for it to blow over. Hajime just doesn’t have it in him tonight to wait with him.

Tooru sniffs again, swallows loud. Hajime is almost asleep again when he answers, “Okay. Okay, sorry for waking you up.”

“‘S okay.”

“Okay,” he repeats. He doesn’t sound any better than before. He almost sounds worse; there’s a vaguely sick feeling in Hajime’s stomach, like something is very wrong. Like he needs to do something. But he’s tired, and it’s easy to push the feeling down.

“Night, Tooru,” he says.

“Goodnight,” Tooru says, and hangs up. 

Hajime holds the phone to his ear for another few seconds, like he’s waiting for Tooru to call him back, and then remembers that he’s tired. He shoves his phone back under his pillow, and lets himself go back to sleep.

The next day, Tooru isn’t there waiting to walk with him to school like he usually is, so Hajime goes on ahead. Tooru doesn’t show up until halfway through lunch, an apologetic smile on his face. When Hanamaki asks where he was, he laughs and says that he accidentally slept  _ way _ past his alarm. 

A tissue falls out of his pocket when he stands up. Soaked all the way through. Alarmed, Hajime wonders how long the bleeding had gone on this time. Feels guilty that he wasn’t there.

“Hey,” he says lowly, catching him by the wrist, “You okay?”

Tooru glances down, and hurriedly snatches the tissue up. Buries it deep in his pocket like a sin. “Yeah, I’m fine. Lasted a little longer than usual, but you were right. I’m fine,”

Something about his tone doesn’t sit right with him - all rocky where it should have been smooth - but then the bell rings. He forces himself to accept Tooru’s words, and they part ways for class.  
  


Tooru’s uncle visits for the last time when they’re fifteen. They’re fifteen, and Hajime finds Tooru in the same place he found him the first time, alone on a swing in the park when he was supposed to be out with his family. 

“We came home early,” is his explanation this time. 

“Okay,” Hajime says, because that’s fine with him, and holds up the ball in his hands, “You wanna play?”

Tooru doesn’t really light up, but he does stop frowning, and his shoulders loosen. “Sure,” he says, the curve of a smile just barely on his lips, and Hajime thinks that he would do anything to get him to smile for real right now.

They hit the volleyball back and forth for a while, talking about school and the team and the new Godzilla movie coming out; Tooru always knows the latest “hot gossip” going around, so he gladly spills all of it - someone going out with someone else, someone caught cheating or catfishing, something about one of the teachers having an embarrassing youtube channel or something. Hajime is only half listening, focused on just the sound of Tooru’s voice more than anything, and trying to match his speed, keep his hits in rhythm. 

“How was your day?” he asks after this week’s gossip is all out in the open.

“It was fine,” Tooru says blandly, “We went to lunch instead of the lake, thank god.”

Hajime huffs a laugh, “You really hate the lake, huh.”

“It’s not the lake, it’s fishing. I’d be fine if we just went swimming or something, but fishing is just so boring.”

“How’s your uncle been?” he doesn’t know why he asks. He regrets it almost immediately, when Tooru misses the ball and falls to his knees instead. 

He brings his hands to his face, shaking, and Hajime is already there, helping Tooru to his feet.

“Shit,” he says, “I’m sorry.” Because he knows, somehow, that he caused this. That it was a reaction, or something. There has to be a reason this happens, even if no doctor could find a physical one. There’s always something - losing a game, or a problem in the middle of the night, or… or his uncle, apparently.

When they get back to the house, it’s Tooru’s uncle who answers the door. He blinks down at them, surprised. 

“Tooru?” he asks, and Tooru seems to shrink at the sound of his voice; Hajime does not like the feeling that pools in his chest. “What happened?”

“It’s his eyes,” Hajime answers for him; Tooru’s uncle turns to him like he just barely noticed he was there; his eyes dart up and down, almost disinterestedly.

“The blood thing, right?”

Hajime doesn’t like the way he says it, like it’s some annoying inconvenience and not something serious.

“Yeah,” he says anyways.  _ It started because I mentioned you, _ he almost says, but stops himself.

His uncle sighs. “Thanks for bringing him home,” he says, and steps forwards to put a hand on Tooru’s shoulder. Heavy, like it’s bearing down on his, big enough that his fingers curl down Tooru’s back, “I can take him from here.”

He doesn’t want to let him. Suddenly, but not irrationally, Hajime doesn’t wanna let Tooru out of his sight, out of his hands. But Tooru’s uncle pulls him along, and Tooru, hesitantly, follows. 

“Thanks, Iwa-chan,” he says, and Hajime can only nod. “Goodnight.”

He doesn’t want to go. Tooru’s dad’s car isn’t in the driveway, and it doesn’t look like his mom is  home, either. He doesn’t want to leave Tooru alone with this man, who looks so much taller and - and dangerous, somehow. 

Tooru still hasn’t stopped bleeding. 

Still, though Hajime says, “Goodnight. Call me if you need anything.”

Tooru does not call him. He texts him once, later that night, to tell him that his eyes are fine. That he’s fine. Hajime believes the first part, but not the second.

He can’t stop thinking about it.    
  
Almost every time it happened has aligned with his uncles’ visits. When he was eight, when he was thirteen, the way Tooru came to school yesterday morning, bags heavy under his eyes and body twitchy and gaze far away. 

Something clicks in Hajime’s mind. A picture that he does not like: Tooru’s uncle with a hand on his shoulder and Tooru crying tears of blood; Tooru with his hands and cheeks stained red like a brand, like a crime scene. Hajime’s heart races, and drops. 

The first time it happened, he was eight. Eight. Maybe even sooner, maybe the heartbreak ( _ a broken heart cries tears of blood, _ he hears somewhere) built up and built up and had to spill out eventually. His uncle and volleyball and his knee. 

Hajime feels surprisingly calm in his revelation. It doesn’t take him more than a moment to decide what he needs to do. Tooru’s uncle is leaving tomorrow morning. Tooru on the swingset, in the locker room, on the floor of his bedroom. Tooru’s voice shaky on the phone as Hajime ignores the feeling in his gut and goes back to sleep.

Tooru, all red. 

 

Hajime runs into Tooru’s uncle at the train station the next morning. He’s lived here all his life; knows the blind spots of the station cameras, and there’s hardly anyone there this early in the morning. 

 

“Hajime,” his mother says that night, voice sad and heavy as she pushes his bedroom door open. In the light of the lamp on his bedside table, he can barely make out her face, her body a silhouette against the light in the hallway.

“Yeah?” he asks, looking up from his homework.

“Tooru’s mom called. Something terrible happened to Tooru’s uncle.”

“Really? What happened?”

“Apparently, he got into an accident this morning, before he left; he fell onto the train tracks.”

“Did he get hit?” just the right amount of shock. 

His mom nods, clasping her hands to her chest like a body at a funeral, “The doctor said he probably won’t make it.”

A long moment. He takes a shaky breath. “He really just fell?”

“Nobody really saw what happened. God, what a tragedy. I can’t imagine how the family must be feeling.”

“I should go check on Tooru.”

His mom nods, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Tell him that they’re welcome here anytime. And if there’s anything at all we can do…”

“I’ll tell them,” he says. 

Tooru cries, but his face is not stained with red this time. The funeral happens - it’s in Tokyo, so Hajime doesn’t attend - and eventually the storm blows over. Tooru’s father seems to take it the hardest; it was his brother, after all. There’s speculation, in the papers and around the neighborhood, that maybe the man was pushed, that maybe he was suicidal, but nothing comes of it. 

They win some games, lose some, almost make it to nationals but not quite. They spend their time in the gym after school, and spend their evenings spread out on one of their beds, pouring over homework, or laying out on the grass in the park. Hajime watches Tooru talk about the stars, point out the constellations, enraptured like it’s the first time, like he hasn’t watched Tooru’s hands trace the sky dozens of times by now. 

His hands are pale, or pink from the impact of the ball, or dark in shadows cast by the lamp on Hajime’s nightstand. They’re never red. Hajime traces Tooru’s lips with his eyes and then with his fingertips, when they finally get their shit together and melt into each other like they’ve been meaning to for years. He cups his face with his hands and keeps them there, because Tooru flinches back when Hajime runs his fingers through his hair, looks at him with eyes blown wide and vulnerable. Hajime’s heart aches, and he does not ask.

 

Everything is good for a while. Everything is calm. 

There is a night when Hajime is feeling lonely, tired and strung out. They’ve snuck out and into each other’s rooms countless times, and Hajime wants to feel Tooru’s warmth, wants to trace the curve of his jaw and the bone of his wrist, so he toes his shoes on, locks the door behind him, and uses the key Tooru gave him years ago to carefully open the Oikawas’ front door without waking everybody up. 

He shrugs his shoes off, creeps quietly down the hallway.

Tooru’s door is open, just a crack. There’s no light on inside. Hajime pauses; Tooru hates sleeping with the door open, always has. He used to lock Hajime’s bedroom door all the time, like it was instinct.  _ Just to keep the monsters out, _ he would say, joking smile on his face. 

Hajime stays still. He’s about to keep walking, when Tooru’s dad slips out of the room. It’s hard to see in the dark, but he’s always cut an imposing figure. His shadow stretches across the hall, looking almost comically intimidating. Something out of a comic book, or a horror movie. 

He doesn’t seem to notice Hajime. He shuts the door behind him quietly, head bent like it’s a sin. Like he’s just committed a sin. Tooru’s parents’ bedroom is at the very end of the hall, the opposite direction of where Hajime is standing, frozen in the shadows, and Hajime has never been more grateful of that fact. 

Tooru’s father’s footsteps are loud in the silence, nothing like the way Tooru pads around in his dumb fuzzy socks. Hajime waits until they disappear. 

He opens Tooru’s door slowly and quietly. He thinks that he is afraid of what he will find. Things have been good. Things have been calm. Maybe things have still been all wrong.

Moonlight pours in through the window, and Tooru’s pillow is messy and red. His palms dig into his eyes; Tooru doesn’t notice him until all of Hajime’s breath leaves his chest in one dreadful whoosh. 

He blinks up at him; his eyelashes catch on the blood in his eyes and stick like mascara. Hajime’s heart sinks lower than it ever has before. He didn’t help at all. He didn’t help Tooru at all. 

“Tooru,” he breathes, hating how utterly weak and useless he sounds.

Tooru sniffs, the sound deafening in the silence. His sheets are bunched up around his shoulders like he was trying to bury himself in their folds. The glow in the dark stars shine on the ceiling above them, dull and just as useless as Hajime feels. 

“Hajime,” Tooru says, his voice thick. Hajime wonders if there’s so much heartbreak, so much blood that it’s clogging in his throat because there’s no room left behind his eyes. 

Hajime wishes he could cry, too. 

“It’s your dad,” he says, voice low, “Isn’t it.”

Tooru doesn’t ask him if he killed his uncle, if he pushed him in front of the train. He doesn’t ask him what he means. Why he wants to know. Why he’s asking. Why he’s here, in the middle of the night.    
  
He just swallows, rubs at his eyes for the hundredth time, and nods.    
  
Hajime feels his blood run cold, and then burning hot. He killed the wrong bastard. He killed the wrong man, and he can’t even find it in himself to feel sorry for the one he pushed in front of a train. He’s just sorry he pushed the wrong one. 

For the second time, he knows what he has to do.   


 

It’s a late summer day when he and Tooru’s dad walk the few blocks down to the late, just on the cusp of early fall. There are only a few months left of fishing season, before the lake will freeze over in the winter. 

It was supposed to be Tooru and his dad spending the day out on the lake, but Tooru caught a cold from one of the kids in his class; a nasty thing that’s been making its way around the school. He didn’t wanna cancel what might be his last fishing trip of the year, so Hajime offered to go with him instead. 

Tooru squeezes his hand tight before he leaves, and doesn’t say a word. 

Two hours later, Hajime stumbles up the front steps of Tooru’s house, heart pounding, out of breath, about to ruin a woman’s life. He thinks about how scared and alone and young Tooru must have felt for so long, and it’s easy to make himself cry, make himself feel absolutely awful as he burst through the Oikawas’ door, yelling for someone to please come help.    
  
Tooru’s mom rushes down the stairs at the sound, and gasps when she sees Hajime braces on the ground, panting like he was running—and he was. He ran all the way up the block, adrenaline hot in his veins.    
  
“Hajime,” she says, “What happened?”   
  
“Oikawa-san,” he pants, doing his best to make his voice weak and cracking, “The lake, he—we were almost in the middle and he— _ fell,  _ he, I, I couldn’t—“   
  
Tooru’s mom gasps, hands flying to her mouth and she connects the dots. She’s on her feet and grabbing at the phone in a heartbeat, and Hajime takes the moment to breathe, to remind himself that no matter how much this will hurt her, it had to be done.   
  
“Hajime,” she says, after she’s hung up the phone, “My husband... do you think he’s...?”   
  
“I don’t know,” he forces himself to sob, instead of  _ yes _ , instead of  _ I made damn sure of it.  _ “I’m sorry, I don’t—I had to get help.”   
  
He listens to Tooru’s mother sob, hears the sound of Tooru’s feet padding down the stairs, watches him cross the room and hug his mom and take the news with a practiced air of shock, and can’t bring himself to feel anything close to sorry.    
  
Tooru looks at him, face twisted up in plastic anguish, and Hajime nods. He did it. It’s done. That fucker will never lay a hand on him again.   
  
Tooru is a good actor, but before he buries his face in his mom’s shoulder, Hajime could swear he looks relieved.

 

Hajime does attend this funeral, because it’s held right here in Miyagi. Hanamaki and Matsukawa both come, too, and so do a few other members of the team. Tooru’s mom cries the whole time, hands clasped to her chest like she’s lying in the coffin right next to her husband. 

_ It’s so sad, _ Hajime’s mother says afterwards, almost a repeat of the first time,  _ it’s so heartbreaking how much the family’s lost in so little time.  _ First her brother-in-law and now her husband; first Tooru’s uncle and now his father.  _ How tragic, I can’t imagine what that must feel like.  _

Tooru presses close to him the whole times, fingers tangled with Hajime’s under their sleeves and his head bowed. Bowed like he’s crying - and maybe he is, because he lost a monster but he still lost his father, too - but Hajime knows, he knows now and he knows for sure, that his face is not stained red. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> spoiler: it's implied tht iwa kills 2 ppl as revenge for the implied abuse. happy holidays!
> 
> yea it escalated quick but listen it's a horror week thing so. comment as a christmas present or smth?


End file.
